1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a financial server, an IC card terminal, and a financial information processing method, which are related to, for example, purchasing electronic money with a credit card.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, settlement systems using electronic money have been introduced to retail shops and department stores, and come into wide use.
The electronic money has a monetary value, called “VALUE”, which is equivalent to money and stored to, for example, an IC card provided as an electronic money card or a cell phone compatible with the electronic money, and the IC card or the cell phone is used as an electronic wallet.
The process of writing the “VALUE” to the IC card or the like is referred to as “charging up”, which can be performed using a dedicated terminal device (hereinafter, an “electronic money terminal”) installed at a store such as a retail shop, or it can be performed from an electronic money server via the Internet.
Settlement by “VALUE” is performed by subtracting a payment amount from the amount of “VALUE” stored in the IC card or the like, and as in the case of the charging-up, the settlement can be performed using the electronic money terminal or the electronic money server.
An invention that uses the electronic money in a manner as described above is disclosed by the present applicant in unpublished Patent Application No. 2003-61943.
In this invention, a cell phone provided with a function of connecting to the Internet and a function of handling the electronic money accesses the electronic money server, and charges itself up with the electronic money while communicating with the electronic money server.
This invention allows the user to perform the charging-up, for example, without being restricted to any physical locations and business hours.
Incidentally, recent years have seen growing use of IC cards as credit cards. Conventional credit cards with a magnetic stripe are being replaced with ones that include an IC chip, which can provide a highly secured credit card system that makes it difficult to forge credit cards.
In addition, it is also possible that bank cash cards with a magnetic stripe are switched to IC cards.
Charging up the electronic money card by using a credit card has been carried out for some time, but for security reasons, it is necessary to install dedicated lines between card terminals and a credit company server to authenticate credit cards, and such installation is costly.